From this morning’s CAC reflection.

“Have you ever had an encounter like this in nature? Perhaps for you, it occurred at a lake or by the seashore, hiking in the mountains, in a garden listening to a mourning dove, even at a busy street corner. I am convinced that when received, such innate theology grows us, expands us, and enlightens us almost effortlessly. All other God talk seems artificial and heady in comparison. “

But, of course, in the reflection this is grounded in the twisted and uniquely beatutiful trunk of a great cottonwood in the back yard…a trunk that appears to have grown without rhyme or reason, following a path to the sun that we find difficult to understand, but which satisfies our sense of beauty…of rightness…or wholeness in a way the straight trunk of a pine often does not (but always should).

Somehow God reveals himself, to those with open eyes and hearts, in nature especially in the odd, the unique, the inexplicably beautiful, the unlikely thrust of life against the odds…the unreasoned patterns in bed rock, the unruly piles of clouds.

As a nature photographer I go out looking. I want to be “expanded and enlightened effortlessly”. That is what I am doing out there.

So here it is…the unlikely beauty of the common skunk cabbage, attesting to the unlikely reality of God’s love and care, God’s craftsmanship, in the smallest and most humble of places.